The days are very rigid and scripted. If a child falls behind the rest of the class, that child is then pulled out of class to get remedial help, meanwhile missing out on whatever subject is being taught…and then needs to play catch up or fall behind.

This program forces teachers to teach to the test, NOT according to the child’s needs. It also is heavily towards the left side of the brain (analytical) and the right side (creative) is underdeveloped. Arts and music, which have been shown to improve IQ and reasoning skills, have been downgraded. The ability to *think outside the box* begins with the new idea which comes from the creative side. The analytical side takes over to decide if this new idea is workable.

And I don’t hold out hope that Obama is going to nix this, as he has already stated he thinks it’s a great program. And Arne Duncan’s handling of Chicago Public Schools is evidence that he doesn’t have the slightest idea of how to run a school system.

This program needs to be dumped, ASAP. We’ve already lost one generation of kids. And I’ve seen the results of that.

RE: Math

I have ranged around the B’s in Math throughout the school years. When I decided to go back to school and get my college degree, I took the introductory pre-algebra class. The textbooks were well written by two genius women authors. The concepts were well explained and easy to grasp.

When I switched to a Big 10 school known for technology and engineering, Math once again became a loathsome experience. The texts were not well written and made things more difficult than they necessarily had to be.

When I went to withdraw from the advanced math class, the woman counselor was adamantly against me doing it. She had the idea that I could make it.

I’ve always wondered why this school would deliberately make math so difficult, when it was clear from the other school that math texts could be written in a way to ease understanding?

RE: dyslexia

When one of my children was in first grade and trying to learn to read, the powers that be decided that “whole language” was the way to go. It was a horrible program. My child was having a hard time learning and the teacher didn’t seem inclined to give her the extra help she needed. She had already branded my child as stupid.

I learned to read using Phonics, so I went to the library to see if there were any readers employing phonics. I was delighted to find the exact copy of my phonics book and brought it home to teach my child. We sat down every night sounding out words. She kept getting stuck on “the” and “a”. She couldn’t remember those words from page to page. I went back to the library and found a book on dyslexia that said failure to recognize “the” was a classic symptom of dyslexia, because “the” didn’t represent any one thing–and dyslexics need to see a picture of what the word represents in order to remember it. In helping my daughter, I realized that I, too, was an undiagnosed dyslexic. The best thing I learned was that dyslexics are often branded as lazy and stupid–but the evidence points to higher intelligence and willingness to learn. Dyslexics get frustrated from their impediment because it takes them longer to learn a subject–hence, being dubbed as “lazy”.

The idea of yoga is similar to Tai Chi … strength through grace and balance, not aggressive like aerobics.